Conventional wisdom would dictate that people who live together before marriage would be better adjusted to be able to survive living together after marriage since they had already grown accustomed to each other. A study presented at the International Conference on Personal Relationships in Brisbane, Australia seems to indicate that this may not always be true:
“Living with your partner before tying the knot may help you pay the rent, but it could cost you the relationship, new research suggests. About half of American couples today live together before marrying, often to “practice” for marriage. But according to a study presented at the International Conference on Personal Relationships in Brisbane, Australia, those couples tend to have poorer communication skills once married, which may in turn increase their likelihood of divorce. The study, conducted by Catherine Cohan, Ph.D., an assistant professor of human development and family studies at Pennsylvania State University, involved 87 recently married couples, 37 of which lived together before tying the knot. Participants were each given a list of personal and marital problems and asked to identify one that they considered important in their union. Prepared by Cohan, the list included common sources of marital discord, such as sexual difficulties, money, career decisions, religion and family planning. Once couples had chosen a relevant problem, they were asked to discuss and attempt to solve it while being videotaped.
Upon examining the videotapes, Cohan discovered that the cohabiting couples displayed more negative and fewer positive problem-solving and support behaviors than couples who had not cohabited prior to marriage. In particular, when discussing a topic the husband had identified as a problem, partners who had cohabited tended to express more negative behaviors such as coerciveness and attempts to control. And in general, wives who had lived with their partners prior to marriage were generally more verbally aggressive than those in couples with no premarital cohabitation.”
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